Hammond Pros

We went to our reliable friend Joe Ziemba the master historian, author and podcast host of everything football related in the Chicagoland area to let us in on the story of the Hammond Pros football team. Joe shares some of the juicy history of this short lived franchise that existed right near the beginning of professional football.

The small town just over the Indiana line from Chicago of Hammond holds an important place in the annals of professional football history. As with many of the original teams that formed the American Professional Football Association, the Hammond squad started with some humble beginnings. Our guest expert historian Joe Ziemba, shares that the club actually was started by a boxer that went by the name of Jimmy Clabby. Mr. Clabby peiced together a semi-pro team of locals that formed un the Hammond Clabby Athletic Association in the early teens of the Twentieth Century. Around the years of 1915 and 1916 the team physician was a man by the name of Dr. Alva Young who was a boxing promoter, owner of a racing stable and a local doctor. Young and another local boxing promoter, Paul Parduhn teamed up to take over the club and they gathered as many of the top players from nearby and then referred to themselves as the Hammond All-Stars. That 1919 Hammond team was truly a group of All-stars as both Paddy Driscoll, Paul Des Jardien, Hugh Blacklock and George Halas were on the roster. Parduhn scheduled games against some of the toughest semi-pro clubs in the midwest, the Racine Cardinals, Minneapolis Marines, Rock Island Independents, Detroit Heralds, Cleveland Tigers, Canton Bulldogs, and the Toledo Maroons. The All-Stars finished the season with a very respectable 4-2-3 record in 1919. Unfortunately Parduhn got in a bit of finnancial woes and wrote some bad checks that got him in trouble with the authorities and he had to relinquish the team. Players scattreed to play on other teams in the area but Dr. Alva Young, the team doctor fielded a squad to conitniure on as the Pros.

George Halas as a player in 1922, Courtesy Wikimedia Commons

Legend has it that a game between Hammond and the Canton Bulldogs played on Thanksgiving Day 1919 at Wrigley Field drew between 10,000 and 12,000 spectators and may have been the game that convinced team owners that an organized professional football league could be viable. According to the book,  “America’s Game: The NFL at 100,” a letter written by George Halas to the owner of the Canton Bulldogs, Ralph Hay led to an initial meeting in August, 1920 to explore putting together a professional football league. Whether that was the main catalyst or not there was clammorings for organized professional football from many sources including Joe Carr in Columbus, Leo Lyons in Rochester as well as other owners and players. Dr. Young is reported to have attended the famous September 17, 1920 meeting at Hay's Hupmobile Showroom in Canton and is considered on of the founding fathers of the National Football League.

Paddy Driscoll as a player prior to 1921, Courtesy Wikimedia Commons

The Pros as they were known continued to play for 7 seasons in the League. Though their combined record was 5-26-4 they had some significant contributions to early pro football. One of these contributions was that of the nine African-American players in the league during that era, six of them played for Hammond. This included the first African-American head coach in the NFL, Fritz Pollard who spent part of the 1925 season with the club.

Fritz Pollard and Paul Robeson in March of 1918, Brown University, courtesy of Wikimedia Commons via The Crisis, Vol 15 No 5, March 1918 (page 230)

Unfortunately the NFL had to make some tough decisions in 1926 when Red Grange and C.C. Pyle started a rival American Football League in some larger cities. The NFL countered by cutting ties with some smaller towns like Hammond to get their franchises down to 12 in markets where they felt they could have some significant gate draws to make a profit.

Listen in on the podcast episode above where Mr. Ziemba educates us with some more detailed stories of this early pro franchise from Hammond, Indiana.

The picture in the banner above is from the Wikimedia Commons collection listed as a Creative Commons attribution of George Halas as a player in 1922 for the Chicago Bears and Paddy Driscoll prior to 1921.